Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman’s Point of View

New Thought Radicalism in Portland’s Progressive Era

Eleanor Baldwin and
the Woman’s Point of View is an intellectual biography of a long-forgotten radical
female journalist in Portland, whose daily women’s columns provide a window
into the breadth of intellectual radicalism in Progressive Era journalism. Baldwin
was one of an early generation of female journalists who were hired to lure
female readers to the daily newspaper’s department store advertisements. Instead
of catering to the demands of consumerism, Baldwin quickly brought an
anti-capitalist, antiracist agenda to her column, “The Woman’s Point of View.” She eschewed household hints and instead focused on the immorality of
capitalists and imperialists while emphasizing the need for women to become
independent and productive citizens.

A century before the Occupy movement and the Women’s March,
Baldwin spoke truth to power. Imbued with a New Thought spirituality that
presumed progressive thought could directly affect material reality, she wrote
to move history forward. And yet, the trajectory of history proved as hard to
forecast then as now.While her personal
story seems to embody a modern progressivism, blending abolition with labor
reform and anti-banker activism—positions from which she never wavered—her path
grew more complicated as times changed in the aftermath of World War I, when
she would advocate on behalf of both the Bolsheviks and the Ku Klux Klan.

In this deeply researched and nuanced account of Eleanor
Baldwin’s intellectual journey, historian Larry Lipin reveals how even the most
dedicated radical can be overcome by unforeseen events. Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman’s Point of
View restores a missing chapter in Portland’s Progressive Era history and
rescues this passionate, intriguing, and quixotic character from undeserved
obscurity.